Pat McQuaid and the Union Cycliste Internationale are bullish on America.
And why not?
In Missouri we’ve seen first-hand the growth of cycling in the United States with the success of the inaugural Tour of Missouri, which joined the Tour of California and Tour de Georgia as the major UCI sanctioned races in the U.S. last year.
This year, the number of races has doubled, with The Colorado Stage Race getting the same 2.1 UCI rating as the Tour of Missouri and with the Rochester Omnium and the Tour of Pennsylvania one notch down at 2.2.
So, we have 100 percent growth in U.S. tours in one year, and we might see a three-week grand tour on the schedule next year.
The organizers of the Tour of California, with the highest UCI rating of 2-HC, are talking about a three-week race for California. And there’s the Tour of America proposal, which has evolved from outlandish and unlikely (four weeks, 4,000 miles, no input with USA Cycling) to doable and plausible (three weeks, 2,000 miles, discussions with USA Cycling, according to McQuaid.)
“I don’t think it’s too far-fetched at all,” McQuaid, the UCI president, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I think the fact there are people who are prepared to consider organizing and investing in such an event, I think is a good thing.
“I know when it was first announced, it seemed to be a little bit sort of AWOL … but they came out with a more refined version of it some months later and I think that certainly is worth looking at and considering and, if something can be worked out within the calendar in North America, well, then let it happen.”
McQuaid met with Frank Arokiasamy, the man behind the Tour of America, at the Tour of California. He also plans to meet with Michael Ball, another man with grand ideas. Ball is the owner of the Rock & Republic clothing line and the Rock Racing cycling team.
Ball has had some missteps, primarily the firing of nice-guy Frankie Andreu as team director and the signing of three riders implicated in Operacion Puerto doping scandal (Tyler Hamilton, Oscar Sevilla and Santiago Botero). McQuaid offered that Ball might have been better off going a different direction with his signings, but overall McQuaid likes what Ball brings to cycling.
“Michael Ball … comes in from a completely different industry with a completely different approach, but he creates media interest and livens up the whole thing,” McQuaid said. “More and more, the sport is being perceived as attractive, as sexy, as interesting and so forth for people to be involved in both as a participant and also as a viewer.
“There is a place for Michael Ball in the sport of cycling. I discussed it with some of his people as recently as four days ago, and I’m sitting down with him someday soon and discussing that. … He’s a guy who can bring a lot of color and a lot of energy to the sport and bring a new media and a new audience to the sport, but he needs to do that within the framework of the establishment that’s there.”
And that’s UCI cycling. The growth of professional bicycle racing in America is part of the UCI’s vision of a global sport, a vision that McQuaid says runs counter to the Euro-centric view among the organizers of the grand tours — the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana. The UCI and the TdF organizer, Amaury Sports Organization, are at loggerheads, battling in a nasty and public spat, but McQuaid says the two groups should be able to peacefully coexist.
McQuaid calls Europe the “heartland” of cycling and speaks fondly of the grand tours, saying European cycling with its rich history and traditional will always be part of the sport.
“We never wanted to neglect the heartland of cycling, which is Europe,” he said. “It was never our intention to diminish in any way the historical races.”
But McQuaid sees opportunities to grow the sport beyond Europe on a global basis and says it must expand globally to remain a viable Olympic sport.
“The UCI is determined to push forward this globalization, against the background of opposition in Europe,” he said. “Make no mistake about it. We’ll eventually succeed, because eventually the sport will become a global sport and not a European sport.
In an hour-long interview with 10 Speed on Tuesday, McQuaid also spoke out the excitement of indoor track cycling, which could be huge in the U.S. considering our abundance of arenas and which he sees as an area improvement for U.S. cycling. And he says 18-year-old Taylor Phinney, who picked up a medal at the World Track Championships, could be the next big star in American cycling.
This U.S.-centric discussion encompassed roughly half of my interview with McQuaid, which appears in its entirety below. Part II will deal with some of the big issues in cycling: Doping, the ASO, WADA and more.
Pat McQuaid transcript: Part I
10 Speed: We’ll start out if we can about cycling in the United States. … It just seems like it’s really on the upswing in the United States. Do you see it that way yourself?
McQuaid: I would say very much that way. I think if I can be a little boastful maybe I can take part of the credit for that, the UCI can take part of the credit for that. Because in either 2003 or 2004, I’m not sure exactly, it really doesn’t really matter. I was at that time the president of the road commission of the UCI, I went over to a meeting in Colorado Springs with USA Cycling, and I told them about certain reforms that we were putting in place in 2005. They included not just the UCI Pro Tour — the much-maligned UCI Pro Tour I might say in Europe — but also the splitting up what was a world calendar into five continental calendars.
And we explained in advance to USA Cycling that our objective in this was to, that the UCI would concentrate in the coming years more on continents, on the basis of what each continent’s requirements were to develop each continent, and that we would, the staff and the UCI system would focus on each continent. Whereas in the past, they tended not to do so because it was one global calendar, and four continents outside Europe, by virtue of the fact that there were 81 or 82 percent of the races were in Europe and they were smothered by that and didn’t get the attention they deserve. So, at that time I spoke with Steve Johnson and Sean Petty of USA Cycling and Gerard Bisceglia who was there at the time, and explained to them what we were going to do and I encouraged them, and when I say I encouraged them in a fairly heavy way to start looking at having more UCI International races on the American continent.
At that time there were only three or four UCI Registered events and UCI registered teams within the whole of North America.
Thankfully since the reform of cycling in 2005, one of the great benefits has been the development of cycling on each continent but in particular on the American continent and in particular in North America. Now they have a US Pro Tour circuit so to speak of very good, high quality and well-organized races which have UCI points and which bring UCI Pro Teams and so forth over to America to race. And there’s the national series below that. So there’s a good hierarchy and structure.
I think, at the end of the day, when you look back to the Greg LeMond years and the Lance Armstrong years, were certainly great for cycling in America in terms of the exposure that they gave television, the actual structure didn’t follow it correctly. I think it wasn’t until the reform of cycling that the UCI introduced in 2005, which has really supported the development of many races in the U.S.
10 Speed: The Tour de George might have just pre-dated that a little bit, in 2005, but since then, the Tour of California, Missouri, they have something going in Colorado, there’s the race in Pennsylvania …
McQuaid: And there’s even talk of — some people think it’s a little bit maybe far-fetched … but of a Tour of America in the coming years.
10 Speed: Do you think that is far-fetched, the Tour of America?
McQuaid: No. I don’t think it’s too far-fetched at all. I think the fact there are people who are prepared to consider organizing and investing in such an event, I think is a good thing. I know when it was first announced, it seemed to be a little bit sort of AWOL in that it didn’t seem to follow the regular regulations of stage-race cycling with very long stages, etc, etc., but they came out with a more refined version of it some months later and I think that certainly is worth looking at and considering and, if something can be worked out within the calendar in North America, well, then let it happen.
10 Speed: Even the Tour of California is talking about a three-event. A Tour of America would be really interesting, we have a great expanse of country over here. They could do all kinds of stages.
McQuaid: Exactly. As I said, it’s a continent, not a country. There’s still room for huge development in North America. From the UCI point of view, we’re very happy with what’s happened over the past couple of years. We have a very close relationship with USA Cycling, with Steve Johnson and Sean Petty and you have a new president now just the other day, so I’m hoping to speak with him tomorrow for the first time. And I know that the relationship will continue. But as I say, not only that but USA Cycling in recent years has gone more in depth into collegiate cycling and that is a very good platform in which to develop the sport. With BMX, when it’s come into the Olympic games, the U.S. naturally is very much the homeland of BMX, and they figure to do very well there.
The track, they’re on the way back, (but) track cycling needs a lot more work. I would hope between now and London in 2012, they will get their act together there because track cycling in itself is booming. I’ve just come back from Manchester (England), from the last five days in Manchester which was an incredible world championships, very, very high standard, albiet the British team won 9 gold medals of 12 or 13 which is an incredible achievement, but also a superb example to any federation or any national Olympic committee or any government that wants to know how do you win medals at an Olympic games. I know that this British team will win a lot of medals in Beijing, but if you want to know how to do it and how to achieve it, it’s a very simple answer and that is just look at how the British team has done it over the last 10 years. It’s simple and straight forward; there’s no rocket science in it. I know there’s a lot of science involved but it’s not rocket science, and, if anybody’s interested in doing it, they can do it.
10 Speed: The interesting thing, you talk about track racing; it can be held within arenas, and we have sporting arenas all over the place for basketball and hockey, and really that’s how cycling was big in the United States in the early 19th century, with the races in Madison Square Garden. It was the big major league sport before all these other sports became major league sports. It’s almost like the U.S. could step back to the future sort of deal, and you have these exciting indoor venues with this really good racing.
McQuaid: It’s hugely exciting to watch, and more so live than on television because an event like the team pursuit is difficult to watch on television but when you’re watching it live, it’s an incredibly exciting event. But going back to Madison Square Gardens, which is where the actual event the Madison got it’s name and with big crowds of people and so forth, there still is … when you think back to what that was, and that was very much back in the Al Capone days when he and many of his colleagues and friends and enemies would be hovering around that event drinking and smoking away and betting and every sort of thing, gambling and so forth, and that’s where the event started. In Europe there’s still the six-day scene which is still very, very strong in many cities in Europe throughout the winter time, which is a carryover from what happened in the States in those days. But certainly it could come back.
We’re hoping, I know track racing, velodromes even, I made a presentation to all the national federations at the World Championships last year in New York, and the number of velodromes which are opening in 2008 was quite remarkable, something like 7 or 8 around the world. But more so the number of velodromes which we know already are in the planning phase between Beijing and London in 2012 is something in the region of 12-13.
10 Speed: They’re talking about one in even in our area, right here around St. Louis, in one of the suburbs.
McQuaid: Why not? Track cycling is booming and track cycling does bring 12 Olympic medals with it, and it’s hugely exciting and hugely exciting to watch; it can be packaged into a TV program very, very well as well, because it’s all within time frames, and quite tight time frames, unlike road racing that you never know once the riders start exactly what time they’re going to finish at because of various factors and so forth. Track racing can be packaged into a very good television program, and there were 37 counties taking part in Manchester last weekend; that’s going to increase in the coming years.
As you say, going back to the U.S., I presented a world champion jersey to a young American girl (Jennie Reed) who won the keiren on Sunday. To be quite honest with you, I think America, the United States should be a bigger force in track cycling
10 Speed: It’s a big country. We have a track guy from the area, Brad Huff, he’s a track guy but he’s been injured. And Taylor Phinney doing so well …
McQuaid: Taylor’s a young lad. Taylor has a big and bright future in front of him. It may be on the track, it may be on the road, he probably doesn’t really know yet. His father was very much a road man. Taylor has a future on the track as well. I see no reason why he couldn’t be the sort of the next Bradley Wiggins of track racing. If that were to happen, then that would be huge incentive for American track racing, because you just need one or two heroes to bring it forward, and then the whole thing goes from there.
10 Speed: It seems like cycling is ready to explode in popularity on a world-wide basis, yet we seem to get dragged into, like, the ASO thing and the WADA. It seems like it’s kind of two steps forward, one step forward, two steps back kind of thing. Does that get frustrating for you?
McQuaid: It’s a very good analysis, there’s no doubt about it. It is true. We are … let’s face it, there’s a certain conflict going on in Europe at the moment, but that conflict is very much based on what you just said, which is, and I totally agree with you, is that this sport is ready to explode on a global basis. The UCI has as its vision and its mission very much in the past couple of years to globalize this sport. However, we are fighting desperately against an attitude within Europe which is very Euro-centric and which is very traditional, very much dealing with historic cycling and not wanting historic cycling to be damaged or to be any way curtailed or any way overtaken by the development of cycling on a global basis. That’s exactly what’s going on.
We’re fighting two different cultures here; one culture which is trying to hold things back and keep things as they always were, as against a more broad-looking culture which is to develop the sport on a global basis and to really show what can be done. Because I know from experience, I’ve been involved in the sport for a long long time, but also prior to becoming president of the UCI, I was an organizer of races over the past 20 years in places as far afield as the Phillipines and Malaysia, I know there’s a huge appetite for the sport of cycling and a huge potential for the sport of cycling in Asia and South American and North American and in Africa even.
When we first spoke of the reform of cycling in 2004, as I told you, we did some analysis of what our global program was, this is road only, and 81 percent of our races were in Europe, and 7 percent in Asia, 7 in America, 5 percent in Oceania and 2 percent in Africa. It’s quite easy to see with that scenario, based on maybe 1,200 races per year on the UCI calendar, how the other four continents were completely neglected as a result because all the concentration and all the activity was in Europe.
However when you look now in the three years since 2005, take the African continent alone: in 2005 there were four races on the African continent, the Tour Du Faso, which is a race organized by ASO, the Tour of Senegal, Giro del Capo in South Africa and I think possibly the Tour of Morroco. They may have been the only four UCI registered races on the calendar in 2005. If you look at the UCI calendar for this year, there are 22. That’s a huge proportional increase on continent. Each one of those races is a national tour — Tour of Libya, Tour of Ethiopa, Tour of Egypt; they are all national tours, new races on the calendar. So it shows the potential that is there.
Africa will always be one of the weak conteninets becase of the expense and the infrastructure and everything else. But America we’ve already discussed North America the increase in the number of events, but like wise, South America, the expansion is huge, too. So there is a huge goal.
Going to, as you say, two steps forward, one step forward, two steps back, it is true, and at such time we can, the UCI is determined to push forward this globalization, against the background of opposition in Europe. Make no mistake about it. We’ll eventually succeed, because eventually the sport will become a global sport and not a European sport.
10 Speed: Can’t you have it both ways? You can have the traditional on the one hand and be global on the other? It seems like you can do both.
McQuaid: We certainly feel we can and we feel probably looking forward we may be obliged to. With the UCI Pro Tour, which we developed three years ago which is very much bringing new events in and bringing the best teams in the world to the best events. The original idea was that it would be the best riders and the best teams and the best events, but unfortunately from several of the best events, which is the Tour de France, Tour of Spain and Tour of Italy and a couple of others that the same organizers organize, they resisted very much this project.
So ultimately after three years of war with them, we decided to take them out of the Pro Tour last year and put them back into the European calendar. Now we’re going to have, you know, we’re now looking at continuing to develop the pro tour as a global pro tour. That’s something we’re going to continue to do and we will continue to have those other events on the European calendar as traditional events and so forth. That may be the way we have develop it. But no matter what way we were proposing to do the reform, we never wanted to neglect the heartland of cycling, which is Europe. It was never our intention to diminish in any way the historical races.
10 Speed: No way you could diminish the grand tours anyway. They are the grand tours.
McQuaid: We never wanted to do that. All we wanted to do was to try and globalize the sport, to try and also create better conditions for the teams and the riders. If you look back to prior to the Pro Tour, teams had no security, they didn’t know at the beginning of the year what races they were going to be riding. Sponsors come in and there was no guarantee what races they were going to be riding, so they never give any long-term guarantees of sponsorship, etc., etc. The whole objective of the pro tour was to give four-year licenses to the teams, four-year licenses to the sponsors, so the sponsors knew the program of events they were going to be riding for the next four years. And those sponsors who were interested in the events would sign up.
So what we’re going to do is continue to work on this Pro Tour on a global basis, with global events in it, and therefore hoping to attract sponsors who have a global image or a global requirement for marketing and exposure.
10 Speed: Right. It seems like basic economics. If a Coca Cola wants to sponsor a team, they can be in Malaysia, the Tour Down Under, they’re in the States and Europe, Taiwan, where ever.
McQuaid: We have to do this. We have no option within the sport to do it, for several reasons. No. 1, the International Olympic committee is pressurizing us to do it. They as you well know, you would know very well, two years ago they did an analysis of all sports in the Olympic movement and they took a vote in Singapore and as a result of that vote, two sports were thrown out of the Olympic games, which is softball and baseball. There were various reasons for that. Now, we don’t know exactly the reasons they were thrown out because it’s a secret, a secret vote of the International Olympic Committee members. But we know from cycling, we saw the analysis was done of our sport by the IOC which is presented to all the members because each sport was given the same analysis, and we saw where we were deficient and the main area we were deficient was in our globalization because we were perceived as being a European sport.
10 Speed: Like baseball and softball are American.
McQuaid: Exactly. We had to take measures to start seriously looking at the globalization of the sport. So we’re under pressure from them to do so, and likewise, we’re under pressure from other sports that are doing the same thing, globalizing on a rapid basis. I mean sports you might not be too familiar with in the States, like rugby and cricket for instance which are making huge inroads into new territories and new markets with TV deals that follow them and so forth. These sports are growing rapidly as a result of all these moves, and if we aren’t on the same sort of bandwagon, our sport is going to become a small sport.
10 Speed: It’s interesting, you talk about the TV. It was very eye-opening in the States when Versus did better last year than in the Armstrong years. It was thought that once Armstrong’s gone, the interest will go down, how can Versus keep doing it? But the viewership has kept kicking up. It’s not great numbers but it’s improving numbers even though he’s gone.
McQuaid: And the fact that it’s not dropping dramatically. It shows there’s a hardcore of cycling interest in the United States. I mean, more and more, for lots of reasons, more and more people are riding bikes, more and more people are, cycling in a lot of parts of America is the new golf because companies and CEOs no longer find golf challenging enough to take them away from their work and their family. More and more of them are buying expensive bikes and going out cycling on a Sunday morning and a Saturday morning and so forth.
All of that has created interest in the sport, and you know you have guys coming in like Michael Ball, who comes in from a completely different industry with a completely different approach but he creates media interest and livens up the whole thing. More and more the sport is being perceived as attractive, as sexy, as interesting and so forth for people to be involved in both as a participant and also as a viewer.
The Tour de France, let’s face it, did build up a following of people who watched it during the Lance Armstrong years and who enjoyed watching the spectacle and would turn on the television now to watch the spectacle. They know the names and they know the teams and they will continue to do so, even when Lance is gone and that’s been proven.
10 Speed: Michael Ball, interesting. He’s really good at bringing attention to himself. He created a spectacle at the Tour of California, and yet, AEG wouldn’t allow the three guys to race, and then they didn’t get an invite to the Tour de Georgia. How can a guy like that fit in? Should he not have signed those three guys? Does he need to tone it down, or what?
McQuaid: He did bring a lot of attention. I think from the outset he would have been better had he not signed those three guys, had he gone for young Ameican talent, or young European talent or new European talent or something like that, and had he shown himself to have a good philosophy because I think everybody within the sport, including any newcomers must recognize that the sport does have — won’t say has had, i won’t say will have, but it does have a credibility problem and that credibility is because of the doping of the sport
The sport is fighting very hard to overcome that, and I have no doubt we will achieve that with the biological passport, etc. etc. We’ve always been to the forefront in the fight against drugs but that didn’t stop guys from trying to cheat, particularly in the Tour de France which is The Race for everyone to win guys would take the biggest chance and that was proven the last couple of years. No matter how much the authorities, and I mean by that the UCI and how many anti-doping controls and how much work we did, guys always tried to beat the system. However, the system is gradually getting the better and better of them, and I think the biological passport will do that.
But I do think someone like Mike Ball coming in should have realized the very delicate scenario he was coming into in relation to the doping and the people’s attitude toward doping and so forth, and as such, anyone who had a history or had question mark over them should be left on one side at this point in time. I know in saying that it may mean that innocent guys go by the wayside because they don’t have a chance to prove themselves neither innocent nor guilty through this whole Operacion Puerto thing. But at the same token if you’re a new team coming in, you should look to the philosophy that’s ongoing on the day and that philosophy within the cycling family is very much that we have to get the doping history behind us, and we have to be seen by the public to be whiter than white and cleaner than clean, so therefore taking on a few guys that have a dubious history or a questionmark, and i’m not saying they’re neither innocent nor guilty, but because of the fact they been implicated or are being accused in Puerto, he would have been better off not taking them on board.
In the first place, he’s already starting when he’s coming in by doing that by getting himself some, I wouldn’t call them enemies, but he’s not winning himself friends within the establishment by doing that. Of course, Michael ball is not an establishment person, he’s anti-establishment in some ways. But the problem is when you come into a sport, no matter what sport it is, there are structures and there’s an institution, there’s a structure and an infrastructure, and you must fit within the infrastructure. There are rules and regulations, and you have got to fit within the rules and regulations. Any sport is the same. You can have ideas whichmight be off the wall, and anti-this and anti-that, you still must do it within the frame work of the sport.
I do think there is a place for Michael Ball in the sport of cycling. I discussed it with some of his people as recently as four days, and sitting down with him someday soon and discussing that. I really do think he’s a guy who can bring a lot of color and a lot of energy to the sport and bring a new media and a new audience to the sport, but he needs to do that within the framework of the establishment that’s there. Once he does that I think he will be accepted into the major league, but instead he tried to push, push, push all the time in the run-up to California and he upset people, and people, once they work within the frame work and this that and the other, they also can make decision, some of these people, and if he upsets than and they make decisions that don’t go his way, that’s a fact of life.
10 Speed: When you talk of him working within the framework, that’s like the guy from the Tour of America. Instead of coming out with this grandiose plan, he could have worked with USA Cycling from the beginning, then it would be a different thing, if you do it the right way from the get-go.
McQuaid: Interesting you should say that. I met the guy from the Tour of America this year when I went to the first few days of the Tour of California. I sat down with him, and as a result of that meeting, he has had a meeting with USA Cycling. I know nothing about it, but he is working through channels now.
Part II, tomorrow.
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